Cryptographers launch web3 research house for zero-knowledge systems

A group of former founders and cryptographers launched a research house focused on building the deep infrastructure of web3.

UK-based Geometry will launch and support web3 projects using zero-knowledge systems and other applied mathematics in infrastructure, decentralised finance, virtual environments and other applications.

The 12-strong team of engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs have backgrounds in projects including Celo, Aztec, the Ethereum Foundation and Semaphore.

“The focus of Geometry is zero-knowledge research and engineering. We don’t do consultancy. But there's a small fund on back of this thing and we've made some investments in zero-knowledge infrastructure companies,” Thomas Walton-Pocock, formerly CEO and cofounder at Aztec Network, told The Block.

Prior to its official launch, Geometry led a $4 million seed investment round for Israel-based zero-knowledge semiconductor company Ingonyama. It was also a participant in the seed and Series A rounds for Ethereum layer-two network Scroll, and led the seed round for Soap Labs, which is aiming to bring cross-venue liquidity to the NFT market.

“We are also running a program for researchers in residence for highly ambitious people who want to come and spend time in a cryptography or deep mathematics rich setting. Typically they will be engineers - but by no means always - and want to build a company based off some corner of this industry,” Walton-Pocock said.

Developed in the 1980s, zero-knowledge proofs are a way of verifying information without being given access to the entire information set. It has been touted as a way of addressing scalability issues on blockchains.